[I’m reading Max Dashu’s amazing book Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion,700-1100]
I weave with words
Letters skein across the page
like the wild flight of geese in autumn,
letters turned into words
on the distaff of inspiration,
trailing ideas
ready for the loom
of the mind.
I weave with words.
Dangerous am I
as the weaving women of old
discrete words becoming incantations,
the singing of thought
and perception into form,
altering the reality of the page,
from the blank white leaf
into the mottled sheet
with images drawn out
and curling under each other.
I weave with words.
By setting out the warp and woof
of line and length,
that which moved me into the
gilded light of flow and form,
the dark recesses of passion
impassive before the shuttle
thrown back and forth line on line,
the pen creating
the garment of imagination,
the tapestry of alliteration,
metaphor and rhythm
maybe only I can hear
as I sway at the paper loom
and dream aloud
for others.
I weave with words.
Word -weaving
from my word hoard,
language neutral until
contextualised in pattern,
shaping ideas into form,
leaving no dangling threads
to unravel my inspired thoughts,
cutting the last thread
at just the right place.
I
weave
with
words.
Gray Bear in the Middle 